Dogs know best!

Have you ever heard that a dog "knows" when an earthquake is about to hit?

Have you ever heard that a dog can "sense" when a tornado is stirring up, even twenty miles away?

Do you remember hearing that, before the December tsunami struck Southeast Asia, dogs started running frantically away from the seashore, at breakneck speed?

I'm a firm believer that animals - and especially dogs - have keen insights into the Truth.

And you can't tell me that dogs can't sense a potentially terrible disaster well in advance.

Simply said, a good ol' hound dog just KNOWS when something isn't right . . when impending doom is upon us . . .when Nature, itself, is being twisted .

Ghetto.. Fresh?!

Ghetto Fresh in OV is getting a make over! Yep, that is correct, the
Farm Fresh in Ocean View is getting a face lift and will no longer be
the scourge of the "View". According to the checkout girl, the
renovations will take about 4 months. So June should bring a fresh face
to fresh food! Yippee.. I cannot wait for the walk in beer cooler!

Nutz

El Muerto in OV

Thanks to 13 News for this...
54-year-old Dale Ritter was found dead in his home in Ocean View.
Mr. Ritter, who was out on bail awaiting his trial was found dead Friday
morning.
Officials said Ritter died of natural causes.
Ritter was on administrative leave from Phoebus High School after he was
charged with having inappropriate relationships with two girls.

Panel advances bill to aid redevelopment in East Ocean View

By HARRY MINIUM, The Virginian-Pilot
RICHMOND - A State Senate committee agreed Wednesday that Norfolk needs
more time to redevelop blighted areas in East Ocean View.
With little debate, and half a dozen Norfolk city officials in the
audience, the Senate General Laws and Technology Committee unanimously
approved SB 1138. Without the bill, sponsored by Sen. Nick Rerras,
R-Norfolk, city officials say redevelopment efforts in East Ocean View
would end in July.
Councilman W. Randy Wright told the committee that the bill has
generated no opposition in East Ocean View, and that parts of the
Chesapeake Bay community remain seriously blighted.
City officials said the legislation is needed because of a law written
by then-Del. Thelma Drake in 2002 that specified that redevelopment, and
thus any taking of blighted property through eminent domain, ends in
July.
Drake, now a c congresswoman, said Wednesday she supports Rerras' bill,
though she doesn't necessarily believe it's needed.
Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority officials said there are as
yet no firm plans to further redevelop the East Ocean View.
The housing authority led efforts to develop a 90-acre area of East
Ocean View where the East Beach community is being built. Approximately
1,600 homes, most of them blighted and some taken by eminent domain,
were razed to make way for East Beach.
However, swaths of dilapidated apartments and rundown homes remain, city
officials said.

Gas Prices

Come quick $1.99 gas at el chepos in OV

Nutz sent you a page

Nutz (Nutzandcrackerz@gmail.com) sent you this link, courtesy of www.HamptonRoads.com and www.PilotOnline.com:

http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=116348&ran=184733

Comments:

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It Blows in OV

Another nor'easter wreaks havoc on the shores of the Chesapeake and in Ocean View. Flooding by Bay Oaks Park and in the pretty lake neighborhood as well. The fun never ends when it blows especially for the people who live down in Willoughby...
With all the bad, there was some good. Of the number of telephone poles that have been hit and a band aid slapped on them, in front of the Best Western, a phone pole snapped during the height of the storm. Of course this was a temporary fix telephone pole from a previous accident. Mother nature blew it down and the utility company had to come out and replace it with a new one. It is a shame that it take a good blow to cause the city to come out and fix the broken telephone poles. I am tempted to contact the city and have them increase the speed limit on Ocean View Ave to 75MPH. This will cause the utility poles that are hit by the reckless drivers to snap completely in half, thus forcing the city to replace vice repair the poles.

NUTZ

Supreme Court Grants Bay Oaks Appeal

By D. D. Delaney
Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006

It would have been premature to break out the brandy and cigars, but there was a distinct air of jubilation in the Norfolk law offices of Andrew M. Sacks last Tuesday, Oct. 24, over the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision to award an appeal in the case of William S. Kerry et al. v. City of Norfolk et al.

That’s the suit brought by the grassroots Bay Oaks Park Committee over the petition for a referendum on whether four City Council ordinances that clear the way for residential development in 21 acres of open green space in East Ocean View should be repealed.

Sacks, pro bono counsel for the Committee, has been in a legal duel for over a year with a team of seven attorneys assembled by Norfolk and its affiliated Redevelopment and Housing Authority in the effort to preserve as open space the unique stand of trees, including many indigenous southern live oaks. The area is along E. Ocean View Ave. between 3rd and 7th Bay Sts.

In a sit-down meeting in his fifth-floor conference room looking out across Boush St. Sacks told local journalists, with key members of the Committee attending, that the Supreme Court’s decision "is a major step toward reversal."

Sacks had appeared in Richmond on Oct. 18 (as reported in last week’s Port Folio Weekly) before a panel of three justices, arguing that Judge Alfred D. Swersky was in error in his decision at a Feb. 23 pre-trial hearing to throw out the petition because, as the City argued, it was improperly constructed.

Calling the reasoning "Dickensian" in its "hyper-technicality," Swersky nevertheless agreed with the City that, rather than a single petition, four petitions, each with a minimum of 4,000 signatures each, were required to call for the repeal of four ordinances. The Committee had submitted 4,423 officially certified signatures on its single petition.

Sacks countered that the City Charter, which delineates the rules for citizen petitions, does not address the bundling of ordinances on a petition, except to say "(r)eferendum petitions need not contain the text of the ordinance or ordinances" citizens seek to amend or repeal. This alone, Sachs maintains, indicates there is nothing improper in the single petition he crafted for the Committee.

Further, the panel’s "very quick turn-around" — dated Oct. 23, only "three business days" after oral argument, suggests the justices "are very interested in our position," said Sacks.

Significantly, he said, in a single sentence in its order, the Court also dismissed an "assignment of cross-error" filed by the appellees — the City and NRHA — appealing Swersky’s two rulings in favor of the Committee.

The first contended that the Committee had misled the public by promoting its drive as an effort to save Bay Oaks Park when it was really about repealing ordinances that would not accomplish that. The second held that zoning issues determined by a city council are not subject to referendum or judicial review.

In rejecting both these arguments, Sacks says, the court has already "given the referendum process a vote of confidence."

Procedurely, Sacks has 40 days from Oct. 23 to file a brief in support of the appeal, to be followed by a response from the appellees and a final reply from Sacks for the appellants. The process is likely to extend into January, after which the court will schedule oral arguments, not likely to take place, he estimates, before March. A final decision might not come until early summer.

If the ruling upholds the Committee’s petition, a referendum must be held between 30 and 60 days after a judge enters the order with the clerk of courts. But the court could decide to send the case back to Norfolk Circuit Court for trial, based on Sacks argument that Swersky’s decision for dismissal was premature on "structural" grounds because the city had not moved for such a judgment. Dismissal without granting the appellants a trial, Sacks contends, was improper.

"But because they have accepted the case...it’s my sense of it that the court will decide if the judge (Swersky) was right or wrong."

To date, "the city has never asked us what we wanted," says Bill Kerry, Committee chair. Conceivably, though, the City could resolve the issue in a negotiated settlement with Committee members, in which case the appeal would be withdrawn.

But, as Committee members acknowledge, there’s an issue of trust. Unless City Council repeals the four ordinances, to stop the process short of a referendum on repeal could violate that trust.

The first step, says Committee member Ann Fitzgibbon, is to save the land. What kind of a space it should be then becomes a matter of community input.

Funny thing as that the Virginian-Pilot did not cover this story!!!

News About Bay Oaks Park

A Trial for the Trees?
By D. D. Delaney
Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2006

Counsel for the Bay Oaks Park Committee presented oral arguments before a three-judge panel of the Virginia Supreme Court in Richmond on Oct. 18 in an attempt to reverse Norfolk City Council�s decision to authorize residential development in East Ocean View�s last significant open green space.

Andrew M. Sacks, pro-bono attorney for the Committee, summarized his 34-page Petition for Appeal, filed last June, in an energetic and passionate presentation designed to convince the justices that "an error had been committed which needs to be corrected."

He referred to a Feb. 23 Circuit Court decision declaring a citizens� petition for a referendum invalid on grounds that presiding Judge Alfred D. Swersky admitted were "Dickensian" in their "hyper-technicality."

Sacks contends that, hyper-technical or not, the decision was simply wrong.

Limited to 10 minutes to argue his case, Sacks chose to emphasize two of five errors in Swersky�s decision.

The first is the judge�s agreement that the petition was improperly constructed.

Petitioners, under Sacks direction, had grouped the four city ordinances they disagreed with into a single petition and collected well over 5,000 signatures. The four ordinances together cleared the way for development in Bay Oaks Park, a 21-acre tract of trees and meadow between 3rd and 7th Bay Sts.

But the city argued � and Swersky "hesitatingly" and "very reluctantly" agreed � that, because Council had passed the ordinances separately (though one after another, in a single session), citizens must vote upon them separately at the polls. Therefore, four separate petitions, each with a minimum of 4,000 valid signatures, were necessary before a referendum could properly be ordered.

Sacks argued that nowhere is it specified in Norfolk�s City Charter, which details the rules for citizen referenda initiatives, that a petition may only reference a single ordinance. In fact, he said, the issue is not addressed directly at all, neither allowing nor disallowing multiple ordinances in a petition.

However, with the Charter�s several references to "ordinance or ordinances," Sacks said, it seems "obvious...that multiple ordinances could be included in one petition."

Presiding Judge Elizabeth B. Lacy interrupted Sacks about the defendants� contention that the petition called for "an up-or-down vote" on the ordinances "as a block" � which is the "hyper-technical" flaw Swersky agreed was present in the Committee�s case.

But that interpretation, Sacks replied, "is simply wrong. There is nothing that says that."

"We did it this way for clarity, practicality, and pragmatism." To ask each individual citizen to sign four separate petitions � one for each ordinance � would have been unreasonably confusing, Sacks said.

The second error Swersky made in his decision, Sacks argued, was "structural"�dismissing the case "prematurely" with a summary judgment favoring the defendants "when there was no request by the City to dismiss."

The Feb. 23 pre-trial hearing at which that happened was set to consider a motion Sacks had filed for a summary judgment to set aside the defendants� objections and proceed to a referendum. Swersky, a retired Circuit Court judge from northern Virginia, was brought in to hear the case when Norfolk�s sitting judges recused themselves.

Swersky then proceeded to rule in the Committee�s favor in two of the objections but not the third � the matter of the petition�s improper form � after which he dismissed the case with a summary judgment in favor of the defendants.

"No civil case should pass muster in Virginia where the trial judge" dismisses a case without a cross-motion from the defense to do so, Sacks told the Supreme Court panel.

In February, Sacks said after the panel hearing, he was prepared either "to win the summary judgment and have no trial or to lose the summary judgment and go to trial �and maybe lose the trial. But we never had our day in court," and that, he believes, is an error the Supreme Court justices cannot overlook.

"I have faith in the system," he says. "I have to believe things so obvious to us should be obvious to them."

The panel will now decide whether the Bay Oaks appeal should be heard by the full, seven-member Court in a future session. That decision could come before the end of the month. �

Gun Shots on Kingston Ave!

About 830pm tonight, a string of 6 gun shots where heard in the vicinity of Sturgis and Kingston Ave. About 30minutes later, another string of 6 gun shots were heard, futher to the west. Please call 911 when you hear gunshots in our neighborhood!

A Nor'ester Blows in OV

I want to be an OP-ED

 

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